Syria Standing in Defiance

US-funded sedition and the responsibility to restore order.commentary by Tony Cartalucci

Bangkok, Thailand May 8, 2011 - The global corporate-financier funded think-tanks rolled out their slick acronym, "R2P," or the "responsibility to protect," as a means to encapsulate the latest excuse in a long history of untenable excuses for wars of imperial expansion, in recent regards to Libya. The corporate-owned media eagerly explained to any impressionable reader that would have them, how R2P allowed the US to bomb any nation into submission that attempted to deploy security forces against "peaceful" protesters.

It is difficult to imagine any nation on earth tolerating foreign-funded sedition, arson, and riots without attempting to restore order. In fact, any nation that didn't attempt to restore order in the face of violent, foreign-funded sedition would surely be guilty of negligence and incompetence. So while globalist rags like Foreign Policy Magazine, the Economist, and think-tanks like the Brookings Institution promote R2P, maybe we should consider R2rO, or the "responsibility to restore order."

In Syria's case, the fact that the opposition in the streets is foreign-funded is a matter of public record. In an April 2011 AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the "US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments." The report went on to explain that the US "organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there." Posner would add, "They went back and there's a ripple effect."

This "ripple effect" of course is the unrest we see in the streets of several Syrian cities. In a moment of clarity, Sky News reported that out of Syria's 22 million strong population, very few were actually taking part in demonstrations. This suggests ochlocracy, and indeed, these protests, just like the protests in Egypt, Tunisia, and else where are not spontaneous but the creation of foreign-funded opposition groups, opposition political parties, and a network of NGOs operating under the guise as "human rights organizations."

These pockets of unrest are then magnified under the disingenuous propaganda of the corporate-owned media, where articles make fantastic claims each punctuated with the weaselly "...rights activists claim." These two arms of the corporate-financier oligarchy work in tandem to create a crescendo of hysteria from which the West then intervenes with economic sanctions, further overt support for the opposition on the ground, and eventually military intervention if need be. This is exactly what was done in Libya, and exactly what is being attempted in Syria.

While those promoting the official narrative amongst the corporate-owned media and the disingenuous liars that constitute the West's "leadership" downplay the role of US meddling, one needs to look no further than the Brookings Institutions' "Which Path to Persia?" report to see just how deep and treacherous the meddling goes.

"Which Path to Persia?" lays to rest the debate over whether or not foreign-funded protests, foreign-funded armed insurrection, and even staging military coups in foreign nations are components of US foreign policy. They most certainly are. Not only is this spelled out in excruciating detail in the report, it has been verifiably promoted in Iran for years in an attempt to effect regime change favorable not toward America's security, but rather for its continued hegemony throughout the Middle East.

The report states, "as far as the regime change options themselves, an American administration might choose to pursue all three of the specific routes—popular revolution, insurgency, and coup—on the grounds that doing so would increase the likelihood that one of them will succeed. Moreover, employing all three simultaneously might create helpful synergies among them. For instance, if the regime becomes bogged down fighting various insurgencies, Iranian military officers might become convinced that the leadership must be replaced and that there is an opportunity to do so."

It continues by specifically mentioning the use of military aid to perpetuate popular revolutions by stating, "consequently, if the United States ever succeeds in sparking a revolt against the clerical regime, Washington may have to consider whether to provide it with some form of military support to prevent Tehran from crushing it." In Libya, quite obviously this has been done on record, with the US openly providing rebels with air support, Qatar and Egypt funneling in weapons, and US senators calling for billions to be committed to overthrow Qaddafi even as their own economy implodes. Likewise, emerging evidence suggests that it is now being done in Syria as well.

To expect the Syrian government to do anything less than crush completely this foreign plot forgoes the entire concept of national sovereignty. It also presumes that the Syrian government, including police and military, should abandon their duties to maintain order - order that preserves not just their political institutions, but preserves the very place they and their families call home. Indeed, Syria's police and military are duty bound to maintain order, as are police and military around the globe in accordance to national, not international, constitutions and laws. The Syrians have a responsibility to restore order, R2rO, as do all sovereign nations, in the face of admitted, documented, manifested foreign-meddling.

Syria is doing just that. It has decided, just as Iran did in the face of the openly foreign-funded "Green Revolution" in 2009, that it would at any cost protect its national sovereignty. While it is regrettable to see well-intentioned youths caught up in this treacherous violation of Syria's sovereignty, the only other option is to allow a foreign-backed ochlocracy overrun the nation and leave it at the mercy of an "international community" exhibiting the clear signs of imperial megalomania and psychosis. If we seek to point fingers and blame anyone for the bloodshed in Syria, we can start with US State Department's Michael Posner, whoever handed him his talking points, those who authorized the $50 million used to undermine stability throughout North Africa and the Middle East, and the very architects of this global oligarchy.